Weekend storms cause havoc and power cuts

by JULIE ANN SPENCE

SEVERE
storms caused havoc across the Lisburn area last weekend, with trees
being felled and thousands of people being left without electricity.

Warnings had been issued that storm force winds of
over 70mph would be battering the Province and Saturday afternoon saw
the worst of the damage being caused.

Over 20,000 customers in the are experienced
black-outs on Saturday, as storms caused damage to the electricity
network. Some of the worst hit areas included Hillsborough, Glenavy,
Ballinderry, Magheraberry and rural areas of Carryduff. However,
according to Northern Ireland Electricity, the majority of customers had
their supply restored by Sunday morning. Damage caused by flying debris
and high

winds, including trees falling on electricity lines
and damage to poles and other equipment made conditions very difficult
to work in. The timing of the storm also meant a large proportion of
faults had to be repaired in dark conditions.

Over
400 additional Northern Ireland Electricity engineers, call handlers and
administrative staff were brought in to reinforce NIE's effort. An
additional 30 linesmen were brought over from England to bolster
resources on Sunday.

A spokesperson from Northern Ireland Electricity
said: "Lisburn, Downpatrick and Craigavon bore the brunt of Saturday's
storm force winds. Northern Ireland Electricity's two local incident
centres in these areas restored power to around 20,000 customers over
the weekend.

As soon as we received the storm force weather
warnings, we put our escalation procedures into operation. We were able
to respond to this event quickly and efficiently. "We have heavily
invested in our network during 2008 and our systems have been thoroughly
tested, but we have to recognise that a mainly rural overhead network
will always be vulnerable to severe weather conditions like those which
occurred this weekend."